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Drawing both on social movement studies and labour studies, this article investigates the kind of people who join trade union-staged marches during the current crisis, looking at the presence of (politicized) grievances, collective identity and the embeddedness of mobilization. Data were taken from surveys conducted during 13 marches organized by the main trade unions in five European countries. They show that participants in union-staged demonstrations in countries in which a corporatist model dominates and trade unions have a tradition of business unionism (Belgium and the Netherlands) are characterized by higher political trust, more moderate positions on the left–right continuum and stronger organizational ties. On the other hand, in countries in which unions are less institutionally recognized and with a tradition of oppositional unionism (Italy and Spain), participants in union-staged demonstrations are more mistrustful of politics, located more to the left and rely more upon informal social networks to mobilize. The United Kingdom falls between these two poles.

This article analyses anti-austerity protest in Italy as a sort of ‘functional equivalent’ of the Indignados movements in other countries. While the typical forms of action of these movements, the acampada, were not very widespread in Italy in 2011, there were mobilisations for social justice and participatory democracy which indeed resonated with the frames that developed in Spain, Greece and the United States. Research based on surveys at three protest events indicates in fact that, in Italy too, protest concerning social issues is linked with extremely low and declining levels of trust in institutions, but also with calls for more political intervention to address social inequalities. After briefly presenting the methodology used in the surveys, the authors empirically substantiate this statement by looking at the political positions as well as the framing processes of the protestors interviewed. While similar capitalist evolution and cross-national diffusion explain the similarities, some peculiar features of the Italian movement are linked with the specific political opportunities present in the Italian case.